voting/press/pr-foundation.html

289 lines
12 KiB
HTML
Raw Normal View History

<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
<html>
<head>
<title>The GNOME Foundation: Membership Policy</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<center>
<table BORDER=2 CELLPADDING=5 WIDTH="595" NOSAVE >
<tr VALIGN=TOP NOSAVE>
<td VALIGN=TOP NOSAVE>
<center>
<a href="http://www.gnome.org">
<img SRC="../gnome.jpg" ALT="" height=250 width=198 border=0></a><img
SRC="../text.png" ALT="The GNOME Foundation" height=198 width=354>
</center>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<center>
<a href="../index.html">Home</a> :&nbsp;
Press :&nbsp;
<a href="../organization.html">Organization</a> :&nbsp;
<a href="../documentation.html">Documentation</a> :&nbsp;
<a href="../membership.html">Membership</a> :&nbsp;
<a href="../elections.html">Elections</a> :&nbsp;
<a href="../directory.html">Directory</a>
</center>
<br>
<center>
<a href="../press.html">[Other Press Releases]</a>
</center>
</td>
</tr>
<!-- End of Boilerplate -->
<tr>
<td>
<br>
<h3 align="center">THE GNOME AND LINUX COMMUNITIES AND INDUSTRY
LEADERS JOIN TO CREATE THE GNOME FOUNDATION</h3>
Developers and Corporations Unite to Advance GNOME as the Leading Open
Source Desktop Environment
<br><br>
LinuxWorld Expo, San Jose, CA -- August 15, 2000 --The GNOME project
today announced the creation of the GNOME Foundation, which will be
governed by a board of directors elected by the hundreds of volunteer
developers who contribute to GNOME. In addition, industry leaders and
organizations including Compaq, Eazel, Free Software Foundation,
Gnumatic, Helix Code, Henzai, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Object Management
Group, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, TurboLinux and VA Linux have announced
their support for the foundation, with the goal of advancing the
availability of this easy-to-use, open source, desktop environment.
<br><br>
"The GNOME Foundation marks a major step forward for the GNOME project,"
said Miguel de Icaza, founder of the GNOME project. "As GNOME continues
to gain momentum, we needed a forum where the GNOME developers and
corporate partners can come together to coordinate the continued
development of GNOME. The support of these industry leaders will help
us to achieve our dream of building a fully free, easy to use desktop
environment that will be used by many millions of people."
<br><br>
The foundation will help set the technical direction of the GNOME
project, promote the broad adoption of GNOME on Linux and Unix desktops
and offer a forum for industry leaders to contribute to GNOME. The
Bonobo component project, GTK toolkit development, Pango
internationalization, GNOME Office integration and other projects will
be embraced under the GNOME organization. The foundation will be
modeled on the Apache Foundation, with a board of directors elected by
the hundreds of volunteer GNOME developers.
<br><br>
<b>GNOME Advisory Board</b>
<br><br>
The GNOME project also announced the creation of an Advisory Board which
will allow corporations and other organizations to support GNOME.
Initial members of the Advisory Board include: Compaq, Eazel, Free
Software Foundation, Gnumatic, Hewlett-Packard, Helix Code, Henzai, IBM,
Object Management Group, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, TurboLinux and VA
Linux.
<br><br>
<b>About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation</b>
<br><br>
The GNOME project has built a completely free and easy-to-use desktop
environment, as well as a powerful application framework for software
developers on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. The GNOME
Foundation will provide organizational, financial and legal support to
the GNOME project, and help determine its vision and roadmap.
CollabNet, the leading provider of collaborative software development
services based on open source principles, is helping to organize the
GNOME Foundation. GNOME is part of the GNU project, an effort to build
a completely free Unix-like operating system better known as GNU/Linux
or Linux. Additional information is available at <a href="http://www.gnome.org/">http://www.gnome.org/</a>.
<br><br>
You are invited to participate in the GNOME Foundation. We welcome
contributions in many forms. Our membership consists of those
individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to the development of
GNOME through participation in the development, documentation and
promotion of GNOME. An Advisory Board provides a vehicle for
organizations and companies to communicate with the GNOME community and
support GNOME. Additional information is available at
<a href="http://www.gnome.org/">http://www.gnome.org/</a>.
<br><br>
LINUX is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. Eazel is a trademark of Eazel,
Inc. All other names and trademarks are the property of their
respective owners.
<br><br>
<b>Quotes:</b>
<br><br>
"It's always great to see companies coming together and working to bring
open source technologies to the next level," said Brian Behlendorf, CTO
& co-founder, CollabNet. "The creation of the Gnome Foundation will
help move Linux beyond the operating system to becoming a viable desktop
application and CollabNet is excited to be participating in this
process."
<br><br>
"Compaq is pleased to join the Advisory Board of the GNOME Foundation,
continuing Compaq's long-time support of the Linux community and open
source," said Glenn Johnson, Director of Compaq's Linux Program Office.
"Compaq expects the foundation will be a valuable forum for us, other
vendors, and customers to contribute to the GNOME Project."
<br><br>
"Eazel is delighted to be a member of the Foundation and to be building
software on the GNOME platform," said Mike Boich, CEO and co-founder of
Eazel. "Much like the Apache Project before it, GNOME is benefiting from
the interest of both developers and commercial entities. The GNOME
Foundation can only help to accelerate that trend."
<br><br>
Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation said: "16 years ago, we
began developing the GNU operating system, a replacement for the Unix
operating system that would be entirely Free Software (free as in
freedom). We aimed to give GNU the full scope of Unix, including
compilers, editors, email software, even games. But beyond that, we
hoped someday to give a GNU graphical interface like the Macintosh. Our
third attempt at that, the one that succeeded, is GNOME, started in 1997
by Miguel de Icaza. GNOME, like all of GNU, is a project of the Free
Software Movement, which has been working since 1984 to give software
users the freedom to redistribute and change software. The rival Open
Source Movement was founded in 1998 to avoid raising issues of freedom
and principle as we try to do. Supporters of that movement contribute
to work on GNOME, but GNOME is not part of that movement. See
<a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html">http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html</a> for more
explanation."
<br><br>
"Gnumatic Incorporated sees the Gnome Foundation as a major key to the
creation of desktop and home user applications for Linux," said Dr.
Linas Vepstas, CEO of Gnumatic Incorporated. "By providing a stable
desktop development platform for Linux, applications such as GnuCash,
the personal finance manager being developed by Gnumatic, will benefit
from the broad array of standard Gnome technologies."
<br><br>
"We created Helix Code to deploy a free, modern and friendly desktop
solution to the world," said Nat Friedman, CEO and co-founder of Helix
Code. "Helix GNOME has brought a new level of accessibility and
functionality to the hundreds of thousands of users who have installed
our product. For GNOME, the next step is applications. Helix Code
comes to the table with Evolution, a comprehensive communications and
information management suite. Now, industry and developer support has
rallied around the GNOME platform and major contributions are coming in
from all sides. We will soon offer a total desktop solution that will
reshape the industry. GNOME has arrived."
<br><br>
"HP is excited to join the GNOME foundation and will take an active role
in working with the open source community to contribute to the future
desktop standard for Linux and UNIX systems." said Martin Fink, R&D Lab
Manager for UNIX Systems Enablement. "HP is migrating the HP-UX desktop
to GNOME towards a goal of common look and feel between HP-UX and
Linux."
<br><br>
"By partnering with industry leaders in the GNOME Foundation, IBM
continues its strong commitment to open standards and a clear vision of
Linux as the driving force for the evolution of e-business," said Daniel
Frye, program director, IBM Linux Technology Center. "IBM believes this
partnership will help enable innovation and will accelerate development
of the Linux desktop."
<br><br>
"One of the challenges the Linux community is facing is how to integrate
the new applications that are currently being developed with the
established architectures that already exist in most business
enterprises. GNOME developers have realized that building it around
CORBA allows them to use components that integrate with other
industry-recognized technologies, such as Java and C++. The OMG is well
aware of the need for vendor-neutral organizations that allow developers
to agree upon standard interfaces. We look forward to helping the GNOME
Foundation in their mission, " said Dr. Richard Soley, CEO, Object
Management Group.
<br><br>
"About three years ago, Red Hat created the Red Hat Advanced Development
Labs (RHAD Labs) to support open source software on the desktop and
became the first commercial company to make a contribution to GNOME
development," said Bob Young, Chairman and co-founder of Red Hat. "With
the formation of the GNOME Foundation, GNOME is truly coming of age in
terms of market momentum. We are excited about the opportunities for
GNOME and open source, and we look forward to working with the new
members to the GNOME community, like Eazel, Helix, Sun Microsystems and
others, as they bring applications and technology to the GNOME desktop
environment."
<br><br>
"Sun is thrilled to be joining the GNOME Foundation and we plan to adopt
GNOME as the future desktop for Solaris," said Marco Boerries, vice
president and general manager of webtop and application software at Sun
Microsystems, Inc. "We are committed to contributing significant
engineering resources to the GNOME project and will work closely with
the other GNOME members to ensure continued reliability and quality."
<br><br>
"TurboLinux is please to support the GNOME Foundation," said Rok Sosic,
TurboLinux Chief Technology Officer. "We have used GNOME as our default
desktop since 1999, and we've been very pleased with the progress that
it has made toward becoming a full-featured standard. GNOME is one of
the best examples of how open source software can succeed. Such wide
ranging support from the industry is guaranteed to help the project
achieve it's goals."
<br><br>
"VA Linux Systems has been proud to make GNOME available on our systems
for years," said Dr. Larry M. Augustin, president and CEO of VA Linux
Systems. "GNOME is representative of the kind of creativity and
engineering that is available from the Open Source development
community. We have a number of engineers who have worked on GNOME and
GTK technology for some time, and are pleased to extend our GNOME
efforts by joining the GNOME foundation."
</td>
</tr>
<!-- Start of Boilerplate -->
<tr>
<td>
<center><font size=-1>This site is maintained by
<a href="mailto:membership@gnome.org">the GNOME Foundation Membership and Elections Committee</a>
and was designed by <a href="mailto:jpsc@users.sourceforge.net">JP
Schnapper-Casteras</a> and <a href="mailto:bart@eazel.com">Bart Decrem</a>.</font></center>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</center>
</body>
</html>